Telephone Privacy

If Protecting Your Privacy is Important…

From time to time, your carrier will send you a bill insert that contains important information about your privacy, but often times it can be very confusing and most consumers throw these types of notices out. Companies plan to share your personal account information with related companies and possibly other companies unless you elect not to share your account information.

Customer account information includes the phone numbers you call, the phone numbers of those who call you, the length of your calls, the products and services you have, how many lines you have, information about wireless services and the wireless calls you make. Some of this information is very sensitive and is referred to in the industry as customer proprietary network information.

For example, when CenturyLink (fka Qwest) considered implemention of this protocol, the OCC objected to Qwest requiring its customers to call to stop them from disclosing your private information (called the "opt-out" approach) and instead recommended that telephone companies be required to get your permission before they disclosed your personal account information (the "opt-in" approach). Because of objections raised by the OCC and thousands of customers, CenturyLink has delayed the implementation of this plan. CenturyLink will now wait until the Federal Communications Commission makes a final decision about how and when a company can share this information. Until that time, CenturyLink will not share your private account information.

Just be aware of these privacy notices and be educated enough make the right  decision when disclosing your personal information.